One in 12 hospitals worldwide are at risk of total or partial shutdown from extreme weather events without a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, a new report warns.
A total of 16,245 hospitals, twice as many as are currently at high risk, will be in this category by the end of the century without a change in pace, according to a report released on Saturday by Cross Dependency Initiative (XDI), a climate risk analyst. It adds that a residential or commercial building with this level of risk would be considered uninsurable.
The report is being published before health day at the Cop28 UN climate conference, being held in Dubai. Countries will be discussing how to mitigate the health impacts of climate breakdown, which include the spread of disease and the effects of extreme weather events.
This feels like a very odd way to point out the problem which actually diverts attention from the real concern. The statistic 1 in 12 seems irrelevant when the actual fact is that certain places will have no hospitals even if the inland ones continue to operate normally.